While Franck Ribery has already shown he can be Bayern Munich’s on-field inspiration, it looks like Luca Toni may turn out to have a even bigger effect on the club’s media profile.

Toni, the tall 30-year-old striker who is reportedly earning a Bundesliga record 10 million euros a year, has gone down a storm at Bayern since his 11-million euro move from Fiorentina.

The Italian scored a few in pre-season friendlies before picking up a knee injury that could see him miss the start of the Bundesliga. But so far he has been making more of an impact off the pitch than on at a club starved of real stars in recent years.

“Teenagers rave over him, mothers want him as their son-in-law, female supporters are at his mercy,” the Frankfurter Rundschau newspaper said earlier this month.

Toni was “a heartbreaker, with a three-day beard, a charming smile and a weakness for Dolce & Gabbana,” it added.

“A natural ray of sunshine with his come-to-bed eyes and his pitch-black locks,” was how the Die Welt daily described him. The club had stopped counting the number of requests for interviews with the player, many from fashion and women’s magazines, the paper added.

Bayern officials are expecting the Toni effect to significantly boost merchandising revenue, perhaps lifting shirt sales to the million mark reached during 1995-96 when Juergen Klinsmann was a player there.

But it will be for his performance on the pitch that he will ultimately be judged. Has he got what it takes to meet the already sky-high expectations?

Iain Rogers, Berlin